Charles Vanel

Quote:
Wooden Crosses (1932) – Hailed by the New York Times on its Paris release as “one of the great films in motion picture history,” Raymond Bernard’s Wooden Crosses, France’s answer to All Quiet on the Western Front, still stuns with its depiction of the travails of one French regiment during World War I. Using a masterful arsenal of film techniques, from haunting matte paintings to jarring documentary-like camerawork in the film’s battle sequences, Bernard created a pacifist work of enormous empathy and chilling despair. No one who has ever seen this technical and emotional powerhouse has been able to forget it.Read More »

Quote:
Wooden Crosses (1932) – Hailed by the New York Times on its Paris release as “one of the great films in motion picture history,” Raymond Bernard’s Wooden Crosses, France’s answer to All Quiet on the Western Front, still stuns with its depiction of the travails of one French regiment during World War I. Using a masterful arsenal of film techniques, from haunting matte paintings to jarring documentary-like camerawork in the film’s battle sequences, Bernard created a pacifist work of enormous empathy and chilling despair. No one who has ever seen this technical and emotional powerhouse has been able to forget it.Read More »

One of the frequent themes in the films of Melville is loyalty between men, so it should come as no surprise to Melville fans that Michel and Ferchaux develop an usual, and even unhealthy bond–you could apply the term ‘co-dependency’ here, but while Melville’s film is ultimately positive when it comes to analyzing the relationship between the aging millionaire and Michel, the Simenon novel on which the film is based is far darker. If there’s any truth to the idea that a relationship can be judged by the way it alters the people involved with each other, then the relationship between Simenon’s characters Ferchaux and Michel Maudet is toxic.Read More »

Faithfully reproduced observations of Breton fisherfolk in story of the man a local woman really loves who will not at first give himself to her because of his fondness for the sea that takes him away.Read More »

This is the only movie the great French actor Charles Vanel (‘The wages of Fear’ by H. G. Clouzot) wrote and directed (he also directed a short film ‘Affaire classee’ in 1931) during his long career (the longest career of any film actor from 1908 to 1988).

A man (played by Vanel) who is working in a mine has recently married a beautiful young woman (Sandra Milovanoff, an actress who have worked with Sacha Guitry and Rene Clair among others). They strongly love each other but everyday they have to live separated because he has to go to work. One day, three children decide to make some tricks nearby the mine. Their ‘games’ have a very dramatic ending because part of the mine collapse and the man is injured and trapped under the rocks. After the rescue, the man survives but he is completely disfigured to the point that he has to wear a mask when he is in public and even in front of his wife. The happiness he and his wife were living in their everyday life starts to fade.Read More »

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“Faubourg Montmartre” is an old-fashioned melodrama,handicapped by a desultory screenplay which blends prostitution on the boulevards,a murder -which will not be explained-,and even hullabaloo in Corse.

This is the story of two sisters, one of them is a semi-whore with her pimp (played by Charles Vanel),the other one (Gaby Morlay) tries to walk the line,in spite of her sisters’ attempts to debauch her.Enter a not-so-handsome young man (A forgotten actor called Pierre Bertin whose performance is absolutely awful)the younger sister falls in love with.Read More »

Waterloo is a German made movie that depicts the soldiers of Belgium + The Netherlands; Brunswick; England, Ireland, Scotland + Wales; Hanover; Nassau; and Prussia’s victory over Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.Read More »

Synopsis:
Shades of Othello loom in this engrossing exploration of class, race, and murder set on an ocean liner. Young Dainah encounters an engineer on board who mistakes pleasantries for flirtation. When she disappears the next day, suspicion spreads not only to the engineer but also to Dainah’s husband. Forward-thinking and absorbing.Read More »

This is a lovely colorful adaptation of a novel by Anton Chekhov about the adventures of Jegoruska, an eight-year-old Russian boy, in a journey across the “steppe” or open plains of Russia on the en route from his home village to a market city where he is to go to school. It is in a way an allegorical trip which exposes him to some of the grimmest realities of life and some of its better ones. We get a social message as well, for example, the harsh conditions of the peasantry of 19th Century Russia. The director Alberto Lattuada often adapted Russian works or made films with Russian settings as in CUORE DI CANE, THE TEMPEST, and THE OVERCOAT. Most of the location scenes here were shot in Yugoslavia. The cast, which includes Charles Vanel as a priest and Marina Vlady as a countess, are uniformly good. Handsome young Daniele Spallone as the boy is marvelous.Read More »